


Season of Devotion

by Hth



Series: Casanova [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brotherly Affection, Castiel & Sam Winchester Friendship, Christmas, Dean Winchester is Don frigging Juan, Domestic, Established Relationship, Family, M/M, Season/Series 11, Team Free Will, Winchester bonding, schmoop-free fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 23:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12995301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hth/pseuds/Hth
Summary: “Dean – seriously, get him something decent.  Don't screw this up, okay?”“I thought we said we were only doing this Christmas thing if we could keep it low-key.”“I'm not talking about Christmas, I mean don't screwthisup because expressing affection makes you feel weird and full of self-doubt.  He's not like us, you can't just insult him so often that he accepts his place in the pack.”Dean's not at all sure Sam is right about that.





	Season of Devotion

**Author's Note:**

> The next chapter of Casanova (Fucked Me Over) is mad hot depressing, so I thought I'd break things up a little with a sentimental Christmas-themed sequel. Spoilers, I guess, in that now you know they do get it together eventually.
> 
> This should be totally stand-alone, but if you're enjoying them here being happy, feel free to come on over to Casanova-land and watch them suffer instead. Io Saturnalia, everybody!
> 
> Title from The Greatest Love Song Ever Written.

Early in December, Cass does the shopping and comes home with an Advent calendar -- a felt snowman with 24 little pouches on his fat belly. He doesn't say anything about it, just props it up on the kitchen counter and leaves it there.

A couple of days later, Sam's stuck white chocolate Hershey Kisses in the remaining pouches, so apparently Christmas is on.

Dean's okay with it. He's gotten over the part of his life where he felt the need to prove something by hammering together some kind of dollar-store variation on normal and force-feeding it to his family, so it's also okay with him if they keep on ignoring Christmas like they usually do, but if everyone else is game, so is he. He stops at Ace Hardware and picks up a real wreath and a swag of fake holly and puts them up along the balcony railing.

"Are we doing this?" Sam murmurs to him when he first sees the greenery.

Dean shrugs. "I don't think we should knock ourselves out or anything, but -- this year sucked less than usual. Why not toss a little tinsel on the end?" Sam nods with a serious look in his eyes that Dean really hopes doesn't mean he's about to go way overboard.

Actually, this year sucked a _lot_ , but it's ending on a high note, at least for Dean. He's not a murderbot anymore, and -- well, Cass is a factor.

He's still getting used to the idea that Cass is kind of -- a factor, now and for the foreseeable future. It's not a bad thing, but it shakes up the status quo and means Dean has to redraw a lot of borders on his mental map. They're good, though. No complaints so far.

Sam doesn't go overboard, exactly, but he really rides the line. He picks up one of those little fiber-optic trees where the needles light up in different colors and different patterns and sets it up in the library. "Way to commit to Sparkle Motion, Sam," Dean teases.

"You wanna hang lights?" Sam challenges. "Me neither."

They could just not have lights, but Dean doesn't press the issue. And maybe Sam knows something he doesn't, because Cass goes immediately nuts for the blinky lights and sits around staring at the tree for hours like he's divining the mysteries of the universe in the rhythms of its programming.

So they've got green things and blinky things, and stuff starts showing up peppermint-flavored in the grocery bags, and _Nightmare Before Christmas_ is watched a time or two, and Dean's actually pretty into it all. It's non-stressful and reasonably festive. It doesn't feel like they're glomming onto something that doesn't suit them; it feels like it all fits the real, actual family that they really, actually have.

Dean could get used to this.

The week before Christmas, Sam's on his phone at breakfast and says, "So you can order dinner to go from Hy-Vee. You pick turkey or ham, it comes with a whole bunch of sides. Pie. The whole bit. What do you think?"

"Are you asking me if I feel capable of reheating a ham? Yeah, I think I can muddle my way through that." It's a relief, actually. Eventually someone was going to mention Christmas dinner, and then Dean was probably going to feel obligated to try making one. This sounds way better.

"Okay. Just, the smallest one says it feeds four, and Cass will only eat a few bites to be social, so I didn't know if it was gonna be -- too much."

 _Too depressing_ , Sam means, rolling out a whole Christmas spread and not having anyone to invite over.

And yeah, Dean can see it from that perspective. Eating all their meals in the kitchen whenever they feel like it works for them because there's a low barrier to entry; once you start setting a table and declaring something a dinner, all the empty chairs become visible. All the alternate timelines where they could have done more, done better, and they'd be able to invite Bobby and Charlie and the Harvelle girls and Kevin and, oh, hell, while he's writing out his Christmas list, why not Mom and Dad and Jess, too?

But they live in the real world, and it's just going to be the three of them, including the guy who doesn't eat food. They still have Jody, but she has the girls, and Dean feels like he's on safe ground saying that absolutely no one is up for The Claire and Cass Have Feelings Show: Holiday Edition.

The three of them isn't terrible, though. "So we'll eat ham sandwiches for a while," he says. "It'll be fine."

Everything is going smoothly -- a little too smoothly -- but Dean's brain still refuses to acknowledge the obvious thing he's missing until he comes into the library and finds Sam surrounded by ribbons, tape, and shiny blue paper with shiny silver bells. "Need any help wrapping Cass' present?" Sam asks, while Dean's brain is going _crap crap crap crap_ , because Christmas is the day after tomorrow and he doesn't think even Amazon can save him now. "The tree's small, but there won't be that many of them, and this one's just the envelope, so they should all fit."

The envelope in question is also blue and it says CASS on it. Dean wonders if he can play this off like Sam stole his present idea. "What'd you get him, a gift card?"

Sam looks both offended and pitying at once, which is a special Sam trick. "It's tickets to a Mary Chapin Carpenter concert in Lawrence."

So maybe Dean's not losing Christmas after all. "I am agog," he says. "I am seriously _agog_ at what a shitty Christmas present that is."

"No, Dean," Sam says with exaggerated patience, "it would be a shitty present for _you_ , but Cass likes Mary Chapin Carpenter, so it's a great present for him. You get how this works, right?"

"Who said Cass likes Mary Chapin Carpenter?"

"His Spotify playlist," Sam says, unbearably smug.

"Cass has a Spotify playlist?" Cass didn't even have _headphones_ a month ago, until he stole Dean's. Dean guesses he could buy headphones, but honestly Cass seems pretty pleased with the ones he's got, so he'd basically be buying a replacement pair for himself.

Now Sam just looks 100% sad about how Dean is. "How are you such a terrible boyfriend?"

There's a word no one's said out loud yet. Dean checks the ol' emotional 8-ball to see how he feels about that and it comes up Reply Hazy, Try Again. "How are you about to get your ass kicked?" he says.

It's a threat that hasn't worked on Sam since 1999, and unsurprisingly, it doesn't look like it's going to start working again tonight. "Just get something related to something you know he likes, it's not rocket science."

"Maybe I already got him-- " Sam just looks at him. "Shut up, I'm still mad at you for making me go see Mary Chapin Carpenter."

"Dude, you're not _going_ , the tickets are for Cass and me. God, going with you would be like a Christmas _punishment."_

"Wait, wait, so for your Christmas present to my boyfriend" -- ugh, god, whatever -- "you're taking him on a date?"

"Are you actually this socially maladjusted?" Sam says, which has got to be rhetorical. "When you see a concert with him, it's a date. When I see a concert with him, it's a concert. See the subtle difference there? Did you really in forty years not learn anything about human relationships that you didn't hear from Dad or Led Zeppelin?"

Dean's gonna let that _forty_ comment go on by, in the spirit of the season. "Number one, Dad landed Mom. Number two, 'Rain Song' is the greatest love song of all time. I steal from the best."

"Dean -- seriously, get him something decent. Don't screw this up, okay?

"I thought we said we were only doing this Christmas thing if we could keep it low-key."

"I'm not talking about Christmas, I mean don't screw _this_ up because expressing affection makes you feel weird and full of self-doubt. He's not like us, you can't just insult him so often that he accepts his place in the pack."

Dean's not at all sure Sam is right about that, but more to the point-- "Thanks, Debbie Downer, that's not actually how I express affection. Did it ever occur to you I'm just private about some stuff? Maybe I'm Don frigging Juan when we're alone, maybe when you're watching I play it a little cooler because _you_ ' _re watching_." Sam's face strongly indicates that he has not considered that and doesn't plan on starting now. "Look, Cass is the one who picked me," Dean grumbles. "If I weren't doing something right, he probably wouldn't have spent seven years stalking me."

"Oh, yeah, you're the king of romance," Sam says. "You should put that on the card."

"Hey, you were the one who told me--" _Not to blow it with someone who loves me_ , so yeah, you can't ding Sam on consistency.

"Right," Sam says gently, as if he's reading Dean's damn mind. "Consider this a friendly reminder. You're not playing house, here; this actually is our home, and that means what you do has grown-up consequences for both of us. You can't keep saying Cass is family and then tell me to mind my own business. I love him too, and I don't want him gone from my life because he can't stand to be anywhere near the jackass who broke his heart."

"That's not going to happen," Dean says. He waits for a second, trying to think of some way to flip it around, make it a joke or something, but he can't think of anything, and maybe he shouldn't. "It won't, Sam," he says.

Sam looks at him carefully, then nods, satisfied.

 

All that's great, but he still doesn't have a Christmas present for Cass.

Sam's easy to shop for; it takes Dean ninety seconds in Target and he's done. Cass is a different story. The only things that Dean knows he wants are a cat and a baby; one of those things Dean doesn't think he's ready for, and the other one he's goddamn positive he doesn't exist in the same galaxy as ready for.

 _Get him something related to something you know he likes_ is good advice on paper, but Cass doesn't really...like things. Clothes won't work; he's simultaneously unconcerned with fashion and bizarrely, intensely attached to the things he likes to wear, so there's no chance Dean would pick something that suited Cass' inexplicably specific tastes. He doesn't care much about food, so that's out, along with everything kitchen-related. He's not totally technologically backwards, but he already has a pretty decent phone, and he's not what Dean would consider a gadget guy. He doesn't have a home team or a hobby. He reads, but Dean doesn't actually know what.

Probably he should know this stuff.

Okay, so Dean's not a detail man, but he _knows_ Cass, knows what makes him tick. Maybe he doesn't know Cass' shoe size or what's on his frigging Spotify playlist, but he knows Cass is homesick, that he loves his people, that he still believes in Heaven no matter how many times Heaven lets him down.

Downtown Lebanon has a Christian bookstore and a New Age gift shop, two blocks apart from each other, and nobody who works there knows anything about anything (they've checked), but they both have -- angel-y stuff, and they're both still open at noon on Christmas Eve, so Dean parks in between them. It's the season of hope, so he's going to hold out hope that something at one of those places is not too unbearably hokey.

He's walking to the Christian store when it crosses his mind how weird it is that out of all the Horsemen and Archangels and Prophets and Metatrons they've been forced to deal with over the years, nobody ever actually mentions Jesus. As far as Dean can tell, Heaven doesn't even know or care who the dude is, and so Dean stops on the sidewalk and calls Sam to ask, "Sammy, are we Jewish?"

"I'm gonna feel pretty guilty about all those ham sandwiches if we are," Sammy says.

"You feel guilty for something all the time anyway. Oh! There, see?"

"Finish your shopping, pick up the food, and come home," Sam orders him. "You've already ruined Hanukkah, so quit screwing around."

Just to be safe, Dean reverses course and hits up the New Age store.

It's terrible. It's terrible every time Dean has to come there for weird herbs -- dreamcatchers bonking you on the head as you try to move through the aisles, crystals stabbing you in the eyeball with rainbows, the whole place drenched with the smell of frankincense and victimhood. He keeps wanting to hide shotgun shells full of salt behind everything, just in case some poor bastard ever actually comes here in need of something useful.

Dean doesn't need anything useful, just something that Cass can unwrap tomorrow that won't become a humiliating story that Sam tells for decades to come.

The clerk is an old lady in a muumuu with dolphins on it, because of course she is. She needs to up her meditation dosage, too, because she's staring at Dean with narrow, suspicious eyes that definitely do not speak of inner peace. He glares back at her, aware that he looks like either a hobo or a Marine, and probably neither of those are the clientele she's been looking to manifest for herself. He'd leave, except now he kind of wants to touch everything in the store and see if she throws him out.

But then he sees it, and it's a goddamned Christmas miracle. There's a pyramid of square candleholders made of cloudy white glass with designs etched on them, and the one right on top of the stack has a dove with the thing in its mouth, the olive branch. Dean picks it up; it's heavy as hell, substantial, not like most of the airy-fairy crap here, and he knows this is it, the something he wanted to find that's related to something he knows about Cass.

Because Cass is a warrior, but he's not like Dean, and he'll never love the fight. Cass loves what he always keeps hoping comes after, and Dean may not share that ability to hope, but he sees it in Cass. He loves it in Cass.

The old lady doesn't give him any static when he puts it on the counter (along with a fistful of sage bundles, because fine, those do always come in handy for something), just wraps it up in tissue paper and then newspaper. When she hands him his bag, she says, "Thank you for your service," and Dean almost corrects her, but -- well, right. So he just nods instead, then heads out to pick up the Hanukkah ham.

 

It takes a whip and a chair to keep Cass out of the library long enough for Dean to wrap the presents and add them to the table under the tree; the minute he's allowed, Cass settles right back into his chair with his blanket to watch the stupid thing blink some more.

"We need a couch in here," Dean says, settling into the matching leather chair next to him. Sam has manfully resisted the lure of Christmas music all month long, but now he's got the computer playing Carole King in the next room. It's a weird choice, since _Tapestry_ was the album Bobby used to put on at a certain level of drunk and maudlin; Dean's pretty sure it was his wife's favorite. But sure, he guesses Carole King is family tradition, if you strip out the sad demon backstory -- or, hell, what's more Winchester family tradition than sad demon backstory? Anyway, the two women Dean lives with seem to be enjoying it, and it's Christmas, so he won't complain.

Cass just smiles at him a little and sticks his hand out from under the blanket. Dean slots their fingers together and drinks his eggnog from a brandy glass with his free hand, and it's all very grown-up and classy.

"What do you think so far?" Dean finally asks him, after Sam's gone to bed and turned the lights out behind him in the other room, leaving Dean and Cass and the blinky tree in the dark. "Good Christmas?"

Cass nods thoughtfully. "I have a lot to be thankful for."

"I think you're thinking of Thanksgiving," Dean says.

"I think I'm allowed to stop feeling sorry for myself at least twice a year."

"Yeah, shoot for the stars," Dean says. Then he clears his throat and says, "I'm... I am, too. I mean, I'm always lucky to be alive, but I feel, uh. Luckier than usual. This year."

"Thank you," Cass says, and Dean has a weird impulse to say that it wasn't meant to be a compliment, even though it obviously was. No wonder Sam is worried that Dean will sabotage this somehow.

He doesn't think he will, though. Cass is pretty tenacious, although Sam makes a valid point about the choice of the word _stalker_ to describe him. Whatever, bottom line, Cass is a whole lot harder to scare off than Sam's giving him credit for.

Dean squeezes Cass' hand before he lets it go and stands up. "I'm going to bed," he announces.

"Goodnight," Cass says, which wasn't exactly the response Dean was hoping for.

He waits a second, then tries again. "Are you going to stay in here a lot longer, or...?"

"Probably all night," Cass says.

"It's a little cold," Dean says. Cass doesn't react to that; that was Dean's mistake, he knows by now that Cass can't be convinced that some statements require answers just like questions do. "I think you will be a lot colder out here than you would be in my room," Dean says. "Do you also think that's true?"

"I don't know about 'a lot' colder," Cass says. "Slightly, I would say."

Speaking of not a compliment. _Slightly_. "I want you to understand that I'm offering to have sex with you if you come to my room," Dean says.

"Really?" Cass says mildly. "You were being so subtle about it...."

"Oh, okay, I just wanted everyone on the same page. I rank slightly below the cheap piece of plastic from China, it's good that we cleared that up." Dean's not _jealous_ of a two-foot, tree-shaped piece of thirty dollar crap. That would be crazy.

Cass looks up at him and smiles. "The cheap piece of plastic will be gone within a week," he says. "I anticipate you will be here for me to enjoy far longer than that." So okay, chalk one up for Cass.  Solid affection-expressing.

Maybe Dean will need to step up his game a little.

He brushes his knuckles down Cass' cheek and says, "See you in the morning, then."

 

In the morning, Dean is the last person up, and his punishment is that he doesn't get any coffee, just a hot mug full of marshmallows that Sam shoves into his hand when Dean has barely stepped out of his room. There's always a chance that the marshmallows are floating on top of cocoa, but Dean has no proof of that. He'll have to eat his way through this mass of sugar to find out, and that's a lot of work to go to at six-thirty in the morning in order to _not_ get any frigging coffee.

"Merry Christmas!" Sam says brightly. He's wearing a red sweatshirt with a big, dumb reindeer face on it, and Dean wants to set it on fire.

"I wanted pie and a wreath," Dean grouches. "That's it. _Let's not knock ourselves out_ , I said. What part of that sounded like _Please take my coffee away_?"

Sam looks wary. "We can make some coffee, it's not a big deal."

And it's not. Obviously it's not, obviously Dean is the jackass in this scenario. He takes a deep breath and says, "It's early. I didn't sleep well. I'm tired. I'm going to make coffee, and everybody needs to stay away from me for like ten minutes, that's all I ask. Then I will be just as holly-jolly as your little heart could desire. Deal?"

"Okay," Sam says. "Just -- meet us in the library whenever you're ready."

Dean gets the coffee going and throws a Pop-Tart in the toaster, too. He didn't have any plans to be the one who ruined Christmas for everyone, but -- that's the whole problem, this wasn't even supposed to be the kind of Christmas you could ruin. They were just going to be themselves, only with a little festive spring in their step, and somehow it all snowballed. Now there's a whole ham sitting in the fridge and a tree in the library and did they get the right presents for everybody and why are all their friends dead and why do they live underground where it's fucking freezing from September through April and why won't Sam just let him have a Keurig, has Dean not done enough for the Earth yet, has he not earned the right to pollute just a little bit?

It was easier when they didn't do Christmas at all. All these half-measures just put Dean back where he never wanted to be again, holding up his family against the families tv and magazines promise him other people have and feeling like he was banished to the Island of Misfit Toys on November 2, 1983.

"Dean?" Cass says softly from behind him, and Dean takes a deep breath and orders himself to under no circumstances take this crap out on Cass before he turns around. "Sam said you had trouble sleeping."

He looks rumpled and worried and just so fucking cute, Dean can't help but reach out with one arm and reel him closer. Cass leans up against him, one hand on Dean's ribs while Dean strokes his back. "I'm good," Dean says. "It was just cold in my room."

He feels Cass smile against his shoulder. "You should have said something, then."

"I will next time."

"Do you want to tell me what's really going on?"

It's not that he doesn't want to. Dean just doesn't know how much sense any of it makes, how much he could really explain. "I miss Charlie," he finally says. "It just feels like every year, there's another empty chair at the table. I miss...my whole family." Not the perfect one he used to wish the Winchesters could be made over into, but the messy, traumatized, jury-rigged and battle-scarred real live family he's been lucky enough to love over the years.

"That makes sense," Cass says. "Christmas is the time you gather your loved ones around you. Yours are mostly no longer on this plane. It's bound to be a melancholy occasion."

"I think that's enough Tim Burton for you," Dean says.

He settles his hands over Cass' shoulders, framing Cass' neck and letting his fingers overlap lightly against the nape of it. He wants to say that Winchester holidays are famously clusterfucks because of too many unwelcome ghosts and bad memories and hand-me-down baggage, but that he's still glad they did this, because this year is different and he wants to throw some goddamn tinsel on it. He wants to say that Cass is the decisive factor, Cass who always flips everything on its head and leaves it changed forever, and at Cass' worst he tries to break the world, but at Cass' best he makes Dean feel strong enough to get up and walk out of his own grave.

Instead he says, "Would you be insulted if I said you fit in pretty well around here?"

Cass smiles at him. "Surprisingly, no." He hooks his fingers in between the buttons on Dean's henley and tugs a little, saying, "Sam has been up for an hour shaking the presents. It's gotten very irritating."

"He's going to be disappointed when he realizes I didn't get him a Barbie this year," Dean says. He bolts down the rest of his coffee, then follows Cass into the library.

Cass wasn't kidding about the present-shaking. Sam is sitting cross-legged on the library rug with all the blue and silver boxes stacked up around him. "Aw," Dean says, "look at how excited the little fella is." He slings his arm around Cass' shoulders. "Makes you feel like we did something right with him after all, doesn't it?" Cass pulls his phone out of his coat and takes a picture of Sam and his dumb reindeer shirt. "That can go on next year's Christmas card," Dean says. Sam flips them both off, and Cass gets another picture. " _There's_ the Christmas card."

Sam opens a heated neck pillow that Cass assures him was rated very highly on Amazon for car sleeping, which is great because Sam needs to be a lot more boring on long trips, and then he opens the bullet blender Dean got him. "I promise I won't even make fun of your smoothies," Dean says.

"That's nice of you," Sam says, clasping Dean's knee companionably. "It would really mean something if you weren't a compulsive liar." Dean grins and blows him a kiss.

Dean's first present is actually badass, an electric knife sharpener like the one he has in the kitchen, only wide enough to fit a machete blade. He's been looking for one for a while, so it's a nice surprise. Cass gives him a special edition DVD of _Rudy_ , which seems completely fine to Dean, but when he starts to say thanks, Cass looks like he's already been slapped. "It's not right," he says. "It should've been -- something more personal, but -- Christmas shopping is _very hard_ , I couldn't-- "

"Hey, hey," Dean interrupts. "I love this movie. And I probably said that around you at some point, right? And you remembered it?" Cass nods. "Okay, then it's personal. Cass, it's awesome." And he means it, even though he could've downloaded this movie at any time and isn't even sure they own a DVD player. It's the first thing Cass ever went out and got for him. It's -- just pretty damn awesome.

Cass is psyched about the tickets, which Dean will _never_ run out of potential jokes about, but he sticks a sock in it and lets Sam and Cass have their moment. Maybe it's almost heartwarming, the two of them settling into their own nerdy little bromance, and anyway it sure as hell beats them not getting along. That is _not_ an option, because these are Dean's people, the two people Dean lives and dies for, often literally. The two people he wants to live and die _with_.

They're down to the last present, and Sam picks it up and chucks it up to Cass. "Hey, come on," Dean complains. "That's breakable."

"It is?" Sam says. "It feels like a brick."

"Bricks are breakable," Cass points out. "Really, everything is breakable..."

"Thanks, Goth Santa," Dean says, and then what the hell. He leans over from his perch on the edge of the table, wraps his hand around the back of Cass' neck, and kisses him, right in front of Sam and the Baby Jesus and everything.

When Dean lets him go, Cass is big-eyed and a little hazy looking. Dean tries not to smirk, but, just saying, he's pretty sure he's not going to bed alone tonight. "Okay, settle down, Don Juan," Sam says, but he doesn't sound that disapproving. "Hey, is this present something I should be seeing?"

"It's a four-inch solid cube. What the hell kind of sex toy do you think it might be?"

"Well, I wouldn't know," Sam says.

"Don't brag about that, that's embarrassing for you."

"Just tell me when it's time for me to open it," Cass says in that perfectly composed voice he uses when he means, _God, do you ever shut up?_

"Go," Dean says.

Cass pops the tape and unfolds the paper very carefully, then when he has the thing in his hands, he turns it over and over again to scrutinize it from every angle. Dean thought it was such a great idea when he first saw it, but Cass' silent contemplation goes on long enough to give him time for a whole host of second thoughts. Maybe it is hokey. Maybe it's not something Cass would ever use. Maybe it's just not his style -- Sam would probably know what Cass' style is, but Dean's socially maladjusted on his best days and he has no idea. He even forgot to buy candles to put in it. "You, uh, you put votive candles in there," Dean mumbles. "I'll get you some votives for it."

Finally, Cass looks up at him, and he looks almost amazed as he says, "It's so beautiful." Dean wants to say something, but he's got nothing to say. He's just sleepy and relieved and melancholy and smitten and -- he doesn't know, just the fucking luckiest he's ever been in his misfit life.

Maybe next year they'll get a cat.

 

 


End file.
